Proposal for Inquiry on Cremation Rejected by Warsaw Kehillah

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

An inquiry to establish the concensus of opinion of world Jewry on the question of cremation was suggested to the Council of the Warsaw Jewish community following the recent controversy over the burial of a Polish Jewish merchant after cremation.

The suggestion was made by Adolf Peretz, a Warsaw banker and leader of the Liberal element, to Deputy Kirschbraun, an Orthodox, who is president of the Kehillah Council. The President of the Council rejected the proposal, declaring that the question of burial in the Jewish cemetery is a mater which is entirely under the jurisdiction of the religious authorities, that is of the rabbinate and no inquiry from laymen can have weight on the matter.

Another incident demonstrating the respect which Polish Jews hold for the dead came to light when the rabbinate of Warsaw applied to the Warsaw district attorney, asking him to take measures against the action of the Jewish hospital.

Following the recent demand of Polish students that Jewish corpses be furnished for dissection in the clinics of the medical college of the Warsaw University, the hospital delivered a body of an unidentified Jewish woman who died in the hospital. When the news was published, relatives came forward to claim the body, identifying the woman as Mrs. Deborah Meisner. The rabbinate then asked the district attorney to order the clinics to return the body. The management of the Jewish hospital was also urged by the rabbinate to turn over the bodies of unidentified persons to the Chessed Schel Emes, the Jewish free burial society.

A concert of Hebrew music will be given at Carnegie Hall, New York, in December. The concert will include traditional music, liturgical, folk, and works in larger forms by present-day Jews. Lazare Saminsky, the composer and scholar, one of the directors of the League of Composers and musical director of the Temple Emanu-El, is in charge of the program. The concert will be a benefit to be given under the auspices of the League of Zionists-Revisionists. As a member of the Baron Horatio de Guinzbourg’s Jewish Ethnographical Expedition, Mr. Saminsky has collected many remarkable religious and secular songs of the Jemmenite, Georgian, Galician, Polish, Spanish, Southern Russian and Lithuanian Jews, many of these will figure on the Carnegie Hall program. The ###atroness list for the concert includes the names of Mrs. Leopold Kehlman, Mrs. Max Fanwick, Mrs. David Podolsky, Mrs. Rose Levitan.

The campaign for $10,000 for the United Palestine Appeal was launched in Oklahoma City on October 31st. Maurice Samuel made the inaugural address at the meeting held at the Reform Temple. Rabbi Joseph Biatt was chairman of the meeting. Under the leadership of M. C. Rosenfield and with the assistance of Dave Schonwald a campaign committe was organized. L. M. Karchmer was elected Treasurer, L. J. Horwitz, Secretary and Ben Boyers, Dr. I. Levy and Henry and Merson, Vice-Presidents.